


this language that exists in the silence

by theappleppielifestyle



Category: IT (2019), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, F/M, Fix-It, M/M, except georgie! he's still very dead, the turtle CAN help us folks, there should be a 'everybody lives/nobody dies except for georgie rip dude' tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-27 08:43:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20757554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theappleppielifestyle/pseuds/theappleppielifestyle
Summary: Richie wakes up frustrated with the outline of a god-turtle fading from his mind, which is pretty par for the course these days.(Or, after everything, the turtle brings Stan and Eddie back. Six months later, it's still trying to pass on a message.)





	this language that exists in the silence

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! If you aren't familiar with the book, there's a god-turtle who appears sometimes. Just roll with it. For those who are familiar with the book, I know the turtle dies, but we're ignoring that.

Richie wakes up frustrated with the outline of a god-turtle fading from his mind, which is pretty par for the course these days. 

The dreams are always the same: he’s in a strange, colourless - not white, _ colourless _\- place where time doesn’t exist and something is speaking to him in layers: there are words, kind of, but not really. There’s also a lot under the not-words, pushing feelings and notions at him and trying to get them to translate, which they never do. 

“Talk _ clearer _,” Richie says out loud. He reaches up to scrub his hands over his face. “Stupid fucking turtle.”

It had been a shock to all of the Losers that they hadn’t been the only one with an omnipresent, god-like turtle lingering in dreams which they forgot upon waking, only to have it come rushing back once Richie brought it up a few days after they’d left Derry. The turtle had been a big thing for Bev, after the deadlights, and now it’s hanging around Richie as well.

“This feels different,” Bev had said on the first of their late-night, early-morning calls about this, before it had turned into a Thing. “Before, he’d just be… around. Now it feels like he’s trying to tell us something.”

Whatever the fuck the message is, Richie has no goddamn idea. Neither does Bev, even with both of them having the turtle-dreams at least three times a week for six months now. Bev insists they’re getting closer to the meaning, but to Richie, the turtle’s not-words are just as incomprehensible as ever.

Richie’s been lying in bed staring up at the ceiling for about a minute when the phone rings. He leans over to pick it up. He doesn’t need to look at the caller ID to know it’s Bev. 

“Howdy, pretty lady,” he says in his best Cowboy Voice.

“I still think we’re getting close,” Bev says.

Richie sighs. Slumps back against the bed. 

“Well, you know my opinion-”

“Something short, maybe.”

“Uh-huh. Sure. Something short,” Richie says, and pushes himself out of bed, grabbing his glasses. No way he’s getting back to sleep now. He pulls the phone away and checks the time: 3.35. He’s gotten a solid five hours of sleep. Better than nothing, even if it does make him remember Eddie’s constant refrains of the dangers of sleep deprivation, which Richie can probably list in order of severity by now.

“Better be important shit,” Richie says as he heads down the hall and flops down on the couch. “The most important short thing in the world. Other than-”

“Don’t make a dick joke about Ben.”

“-I was gonna go for a dick joke about _ Stan _,” Richie says. His jaw cracks in a yawn. “Get some variety in there. My dick jokes always go Ben-wards when I talk to you now. God, that was sloppy. I’m so fucking tired.”

“It wasn’t your best dick joke,” Bev agrees. “And me too. I have a presentation in the morning, there have been some last minute changes to the Autumn line.”

“You’ll be fine, Bev. Rail some coffee and you’ll be jumping fit in no time.”

“Jumping fit?”

“I’m _ so _tired.” And yet so awake. It’s always like this after the turtle dreams - he snaps back into consciousness with his brain at full blast, like he’s just learned some crucial truth about the universe but can’t work out what it is.

“What if he’s saying it in a way we can understand, but then erasing it after?”

“I don’t think he’d do that.”

“Oh, suddenly you know our great lord, the turtle god?”

Bev laughs. She doesn’t justify it with an answer, and Richie gets it. He doesn’t think the turtle is erasing the words, or if he is, he’s not doing it on purpose. The turtle feels… grandfatherly. Not _ Richie’s _grandfather, but what a grandfather is supposed to be: wise and kind and loving. Wants the best for his dumb grandkids and tries to do right by them even as the kids make their own dumb choices.

“How’s Ben,” Richie asks.

“He’s good,” Bev says, and he can hear her smile in her voice. She says it like it means more than what it is, and Richie gets that, too - Ben has always had this sweet pureness about him, in a way that has always reminded Richie of a golden retriever. _ He’s good. _ Yeah, he is. Richie’s glad he finally got his shit sorted out with Bev. If any guy deserves a happy ending it’s Ben Hascolm, who holds elevator doors for strangers and puts out sugar water for tired bees and cries at any animal dying in a movie.

Bev continues, “And how’s Eddie?”

Richie snorts. Leans his head back against the couch cushions and thinks longingly of sleep, and definitely not for other things. “He’s Eddie. Yesterday he got into a fight with a deli dude who wasn’t wearing gloves.”

“Well, that is unhygienic. Did he _ fight _, or-”

“He didn’t throw punches, but it was getting there when I dragged him away. He’s like - god, he’s like a chihuahua. So tiny yet so full of rage.”

Bev laughs louder at that, a bright, pleased sound that Richie assumes hadn’t been too present in the last 27 years. Not in its real version, anyway. Bev, it turns out, had been just like Richie in that way: she didn’t spend much time alone and didn’t have a lot of casual friends, but no one she let past her defences. Everyone was kept at arms lengths, since and up until Derry.

“I’ll tell him you said that,” she says.

“Oh, I already did. I was yelling that over him as I had him by the collar, in between apologizing to the deli guy.”

“Aw.”

“_ Aw _ ? Eddie did not say _ aw _, Bev. He had some very unhappy words for me. Many of them, actually. So many unhappy words that we got told to shut up by a girl stacking tampons, since people were staring and there were children present.”

Bev laughs again, but it’s softer. “Are you going to talk to him, Richie?”

Richie closes his eyes. Tries to picture the turtle, huge and ineffable and broadcasting love all over him. _ O turtle god, guide me to - to - I don’t really know how to do this, my dude - _

“Maybe.”

She sighs. “Rich-”

Richie, because all of life is a performance even when nobody’s watching, throws his free hand up in the air. “It’s better than 3 months ago when I said never! _ Maybe _is better than never! Hey, has Ben popped the question yet or is he still hiding that ring in the sock drawer?”

“N - wait, does he actually-”

“I don’t know, probably.” Shit. What if Ben does have a ring tucked away in a sock drawer? If he does, Richie doesn’t technically know about it, so he can’t be held culpable. 

“So he hasn’t?”

“We haven’t even been together a year, Rich.”

“Yeah,” Richie says, “But he’s been in love with you his whole life.”

“Not his whole life.”

“Maybe,” Richie says. It’s something he thinks about nowadays, since he’s gotten his memories of his childhood back - maybe all of this was destined. Maybe they’ve had each other in their hearts since they were born. There had been a sense, that summer, that they were all waiting for something, and once Mike had joined the group it had clicked into place. _ This - yes, this, us, we’re finally all here. _

It might be like that for Ben and Bev. They’d been in love with each other in the 27-year gap, why couldn’t they have been in love with each other before they met? It makes sense when Richie’s feeling sentimental, though he doesn’t let himself think about it much.

He gets the feeling Bev is about to say something that will make Richie want to tear his skin off, so he says, “Can I be maid of honour?”

The smile is back. “I wouldn’t have anyone else.”

“Awww. Wait, really?”

“Yes, Richie.”

Richie tries not to let his smile get too loose. It’s a _ bit _ , sure, but he’s not used to this, to being so involved in someone’s life, to _ mattering _this much.

“Wow,” he says. “I’ll start planning my dress. Any themes in mind?”

Bev makes a distinctly unladylike sound in her next laugh.

“I love you,” she says, still caught up in the laugh.

Richie’s chest fills with warmth. He starts thinking sentimental shit, as he’s started to do since Mike called and everything flooded back: _ How could I forget you? God, I missed all of you, how did we survive 3 decades without this - _

“Love you too,” he says. 

Then Bev goes and ruins it with, “Can I be maid of honour for you and Eddie’s-”

“Alright, time to shut up,” Richie says. His grin dims, but doesn’t go away. “Pumped for the beach house?”

“You know it,” Bev says. “Have you packed? Eddie said-”

“Fuck, I’ve tried to put it off but Eddie’s been _ hounding _ me, the little shit. Has he been complaining to you about me? He started packing last _ week _ , Bev. How long does it take to pack for a three-day trip? He made me write a _ list _.”

“Poor Richie.”

“Poor Richie,” he echoes. It comes out softer than he expected. 

They sit in comfortable silence for a while. Richie’s never had this: someone he can be on the phone with, not talking, not feeling the need to end the silence or the call.

“Fucking turtle,” is what finally breaks the quiet. 

“Fucking turtle,” Bev says, but there’s no heat in it. There wasn’t much in Richie’s, either. Neither of them mean it - they thank him, sometimes. All of them do, after he brought Eddie and Stan back.

  
  
  


Richie’s trying to read a book when the lounge light switches on.

Richie looks up, squinting in the light that’s suddenly not just from the lamp. Eddie squints back at him, rubbing at his cheek scar.

“Why,” Eddie says, in a raspy voice that means he’s not 100% awake yet.

“Back at you,” Richie says. “It’s-” He checks his phone. “-4am. What-”

“Did you have a turtle dream,” Eddie asks. He comes over and sits next to Richie on the couch, in a way that Richie’s mom would call ‘falling down and letting the couch catch him.’

“You know that turtle,” Richie says. “Always trying to interrupt my beauty sleep. Bastard wants my hairline to keep receding, apparently.”

“That can actually-”

“I know, you covered it on your last_ Richie you’re gonna die if you don’t get enough sleep _speech. You’re worse than WebMD, you know that, right?”

“Fuck you, man.”

“Fuck _ you _,” Richie says. He kicks his foot. Eddie kicks back, but sleepily. He’s wearing socks with turtles on them, which had been a gift from Richie for his birthday last month. The turtles have smiles and big anime eyes. Richie wonders if they should feel sacrilegious. He wonders if they should be more serious about this whole turtle god thing, but then decides that from what he knows about the turtle, he wouldn’t give a shit whether or not Richie built a turtle shrine or not.

That would be hilarious, though. Richie makes a mental note to bring it up to Eddie later, just to see him get worked up about how stupid it would be. They could put the socks on the shrine. They could burn the socks as a sacrifice, like the Greeks burned their best oxen for Zues -

_ Focus _, Richie thinks. He watches Eddie settle back against the couch like he’s hoping it’ll put him back to sleep.

“What about you,” Richie says. “Has the turtle started gracing you with his presence?”

“Nope,” Eddie says. He pauses. “Just the usual dreams.”

“Right,” Richie says. He’s not touching that with a ten foot pole. 

The usual dreams - dying, coming back from the dead. Eddie might not like to think about it, but Richie doesn’t actually know if thinking about it’s worse for Eddie or him. Richie does everything in his fucking power to never, ever think about that six hours when he thought Eddie was dead - Ben dragging him out of the Neibolt house, all of them jumping in the lake, then heading back to the inn. Richie had gone to his room and curled up under the covers and cried like he’d done at the lake, like a fucking baby, and had been just about to go to sleep when someone had shaken his shoulder.

_ What _, he’d snapped, sitting up, and then he’d found himself face to face with Eddie, who was in front of Stan, both of whom were wet and shaking like they’d just come in from a blizzard.

They’d come out of the lake. Eddie and Stan remembered dying, for the most part - everything going distant and blank, and then there wasn’t much of anything until a fucking turtle had appeared and suddenly they were corporeal again and then they found themselves struggling to the surface of the water about two meters apart from each other.

That whole day was a blur for pretty much everyone, and Richie knows that both Eddie and Stan still get bad dreams about dying. He knows that Eddie dreams about being trapped under dirty water, swimming up and never getting to the surface. He knows that Stan dreams about about being left alone in the sewers, about leaving his friends alone in a lair that he never saw, but somehow can picture perfectly. 

And Richie still doesn’t know who’s more fucked up over Eddie dying, him or Eddie, not that he’d ever admit that to anyone. What he does know is that whenever he starts thinking about Eddie dying, or that period where he thought Eddie was staying dead, his mind recoiled from that like a hand from a hot fucking stove. The concept of having to live in a world without Eddie - Stan, too, but honestly, more Eddie, not that he’ll ever let that one slip, either - was so fucking awful that Richie still doesn’t let himself remember it.

“Did you call Bev,” Eddie asks.

“Yep.”

“Figured out what he’s saying yet?”

“Nope.”

Eddie sighs. “It better not be anything time-sensitive. Like, _ you’re all gonna die on February 3rd unless you all come to California and complete a ritual involving the blood of a brunette with a gap-tooth!” _

“Yeah, that would suck,” Richie says. “Imagine if we finally got the message on February 4th.”

“We wouldn’t, dumbass. We’d be dead.”

“Oh, right.” Richie closes his book. This could be some worthwhile banter. “I thought you’d be getting up so we could get to the airport.”

“What? Our flight’s at 3, asshole. That’s 11 hours away.”

“I know, but _ last _time-”

“That wasn’t because I wanted to get to the airport crazy early, that was because I wanted to get out of Derry! Even an airport is better than _ Derry _.” 

Eddie shudders. Richie clocks it at maybe 60% fake.

“Wow,” he says. “That truly is a testament to how much you hate Derry. I thought you were going to have an aneurysm in that airport. Remember when you had to pee and you were sanitizing every single surface before you touched-”

“Do you want me to go over the facts, Richie? ‘Cause I’ll start on it again. I’ll bring it up on the plane as we’re stuck together for hours-”

“Oh, like you can resist going into your spiel while we’re _ at _the airport-”

“Do you know how many diseases are passed-”

“Yes! I do know! Because you _ won’t stop telling me _-”

Eddie points at him. It’s just as adorable as it was when he was 12. “I’m not having this fight with you!”

“Right,” Richie nods. “We’ll save that for the germ-filled airport, with its plastic bins at security that you refuse to touch.”

Eddie sucks in a breath like he’s going to reply, then stops and just blows it out.

“There’s one good thing that can come out of waking up this early,” he says. “Have you packed?”

“Almost.”

“_ Sure _. Fuck, Richie-”

“Almost! I promise! It’s a _ three-day _ trip, I don’t need to-”

“A lot can happen in three days,” Eddie says, which brings them back to how much luggage Eddie had packed on the Derry trip, which circles back to airports, which gets them both embroiled in the airport debacle again. Richie allows the bickering to continue, half because he enjoys it like he has enjoyed nothing else since he was a fucking kid, and half because he’s trying to smother the knowledge that Eddie had literally died and come back and Richie still can’t tell him he’s in love with him. He can’t say it, even after he’s come out to everybody and Eddie’s living with him after divorcing his wife.

He wants to say that he’s completely shaken off Derry, that they’ve all moved forwards with their goddamn lives after 27 years, but it turns out that there are some things that stay buried. And - this is good enough. This is _ better _than good enough. Richie gets to live with Eddie, he gets to be around him all the fucking time. So what if he’s still a cowardly little shit who can’t fess up to his big gay crush and scare off his best friend? If Eddie wanted that, he’d tell Richie, because Richie’s finally out. But he hasn’t, so he doesn’t. And what they have is the best thing that Richie’s ever had, so he’s not about to make that awkward by saying some difficult truths. 

  
  
  
  


Eddie is his usual self at the airport, which means that Richie has to stop himself from grinning at him like a creepy fuck when Eddie does ridiculous shit like_ put actual disposible plastic gloves _ on in the taxi on the way over. He settles for teasing the shit out of him, which is familiar and fun and almost gets them kicked out of the taxi for having a screaming argument which is less scream and more insane laughter on Richie’s side, and is 100% scream on Eddie’s side.

Richie doesn’t blame the taxi driver for yelling. He also doesn’t blame the airport security for looking impatient and very, very tired as Eddie changed his disposable gloves.

“Airports are a hotbed for germs,” Richie tells the guard.

“Shut the fuck up,” Eddie says.

_ I’m fucking blessed _, Richie thinks. He grins. Eddie starts glaring at him and he only grins harder.

_ Thanks, turtle-god, _ Richie thinks. _ Please don’t make the message time-sensitive, I just got him - I just got them back. _

  
  
  


They’re the last to get to Ben’s beach house, so they’re greeted with everyone turning around and going _ heeeey! _ behind the front door they knock on. Mike launches at them in a hug and Bill follows and before Richie knows it he’s in a seven-way hug, him and Eddie crowded in the middle with the others arms circling them. 

“Good to see you guys, too,” Richie says, and it’s muffled by someone’s - Bill’s? - arm. He hugs Mike back, since that’s pretty much all he can reach without struggling away, and lets himself bask in something he hadn’t realized he was missing for most of his life.

“We’re playing Jenga,” Ben says when they’re more or less detangled from each other. “Want to join?”

“Ben and Mike are playing Jenga,” Stan says. “The rest of us are watching and drinking.”

“And providing useful tips,” Bev adds.

“Right,” Stan says. “Useful tips. I forgot. Want to provide useful tips, guys?”

“Funny you said that,” Richie says. “I actually minored in providing useful tips to losers playing Jenga in college.”

“Fucking Christ,” Eddie says.

“What? Eds-”

“Someone please show me where I’m sleeping,” Eddie says.

“This way,” Ben says. He eyes Eddie’s bags - bags, plural - but says nothing, unlike Mike, who’s been insufferably cheery since getting out of Derry, who says, “Whoa, you sure you’re prepared, Eddie?”

“Don’t you start,” Eddie says. “No - Richie, shut _ up _or once, alright?”

“I didn’t say anything!”

“You were going to! You have that fucking look on your face-”

“What look!”

“That fucking look!”

“I’m just _ smiling _! Can’t a guy smile when he’s reunited with his friends-”

Ben calls, “So the room’s just upstairs, if you’ll follow me,” in his adorable, _ I’m-not-going-to-be-rude-but-please-shut-up _ voice that always reminds Richie of Mike. 

Eddie sighs loud enough to get Richie grinning again, which doesn’t lessen when Eddie catches him and elbows him in the ribs for it.

Richie doubles over, mostly for the effect, and watches Eddie flip him off on the way to follow Ben. Richie’s giggling weakly as he straightens up, only now noticing that everyone’s giving him or each other looks.

Richie sighs. “I know, alright? Everyone can it. Stan, I see you. Shut your face.”

Stan gets this infuriatingly knowing look, but it’s only there for a second, and then he’s rolling his eyes. “Good to see you, Rich.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Richie says. He gives him a second hug, a proper one where they’re not all tangled with other people. “How’re you? How’s the wife?”

“She’s good! She’s actually here.”

“Oh shit, you dragged her along?” 

“Yeah, you want to meet her?”

Everyone is heading back into the house by now, instead of milling around on the porch steps.

“Uh,” Richie says. “Sure, I’d love to meet Mrs. Urine.”

“Try that on her, Rich. See how she takes it.”

“I won’t try it on her,” Richie says, and follows Stan through the house. It’s fucking big, and flashy enough to make Richie a little intmidated.

He leans close to Stan. “Fuck, how loaded is Ben anyway-”

He cuts off when they emerge into a kitchen and find Patricia eating olives and feta cheese out of a tiny bowl. She looks up when they come in, but otherwise she’d seemed pretty focused on the olives and feta.

“Hi! Richie Tozier, right? We watched your Netflix special.” She puts an arm around Stan’s waist, who puts an arm around her shoulders. This happens in the worn way that couples do, a dance they’ve practiced too many times to count.

“And Stan showed me photos,” she continues. “After he - remembered. There were some in a box in storage. And, uh.” 

She trails off. Richie and Patricia have actually talked once, very briefly. It was on the phone while Stan had to have a bathroom break. They’d been Facetiming, since Patricia hadn’t been fully convinced by her husband’s voice and was still not convinced on video, which - okay, Richie can’t blame her. She’d found him in the bathtub, wrists cut, completely bled out. She’d held his cooling body. He’d been medically declared dead by _ doctors _. It made sense that she’d have to have her husband in front of her, touching her, speaking to her in person, to fully believe that he was alive.

“Good to meet you in person,” Richie says, instead of _ ha ha, remember that one time-? _

“He talks about you a lot.”

“He does that,” Patricia says, and glances over at Stan like it’s a private joke. Stan smiles, and it’s all so cute that Richie tries to remember how long they’ve been married - 15 years can’t be right. They still act like newlyweds. Maybe Stan’s dying-and-coming-back, vanishing into a body bag and then calling from Maine a day later and provoking a lot of explanation and actual, real Trauma, had spiced up the relationship. On second thought, Richie doubts it - more likely that Stan lucked out and became half of one of those couples that are still genuinely in love almost 2 decades down the line. Weird fucks.

From the way Patricia looks at him, Richie assumes she remembers their brief interaction. It had been in the hotel, both Stan and Patricia had been Facetiming and crying, and Stan had to go to the bathroom, so he’d handed the phone over to Richie.

_ Uh _ , Richie had said. _ Hi _.

Patricia had been crying. She’d been confused and angry and Richie hadn’t bothered to try and comfort her, he’d been sitting there listening to Stan and her talk for twenty minutes before this. 

_ What the heck is going on, _ Patricia had said, not for the first time. Of course Stan had married a woman who said _ heck _during the weirdest and most painful interaction of her life.

Richie had said _ Uhhhh _again and tried making eye contact with Bev across the room, who shrugged helplessly.

From what Richie had heard, and what Stan told him afterwards, Patricia knows the whole story. He has no idea how much of it she _ believes _, but she’s been told everything. The fact that she’s sticking around is surprising - Richie doesn’t know what he would’ve done, in her position. Check into a crazy house, maybe. Or check Stan into it. 

“How are the turtle dreams,” Patricia asks.

Richie raises his eyebrows. He looks at Stan, who shrugs, like,_ yeah, I tell my wife about how you and Bev get dreams about a giant turtle who may or may not be God but definitely created the universe. Via vomiting it up. We’re all just turtle puke in the wind - _

“They’re… the same,” Richie says. “Hey, you’re taking this really well.”

Patricia shrugs. “I’m rolling with the punches. I got my husband back, that’s the most important thing. Everything else is confetti.”

“Including your husband’s friends’ dreams about turtle-god?”

“Yep.” She smiles. Okay, Stan’s 100% told her about how they think that the turtle might be God. And she’s... cool with it.

“Where did you find this woman,” Richie says.

The happy couple laughs and Richie watches them in bewilderment.

“Oh,” Patricia says. “This must be your Eddie.”

Richie starts to frown at Stan - Stan’s Eddie? What? - and then stops when Eddie comes up next to him and it clicks. _ Richie’s _Eddie. Great. Okay.

_ What the fuck did you tell her about us _ , Richie doesn’t yell at Stan, because he has _ some _ self-preservation instinct. _ Does she think we’re a couple? _

“Yep,” Richie says instead, popping the _ p _. “This is my Eddie.”

He makes it as annoying as possible, slinging an arm around Eddie’s shoulder and jostling him. Eddie shoves at him, not ungently.

“She’s seen photos of us when we were kids,” Richie tells him. “Hey, did you see Eddie’s shorts? Those little red-”

“Shut up about my shorts,” Eddie says. “They were _ practical _ . You were always getting water and dirt on your hem, whereas _ I _-”

“Right, sure, the shorts were for _ practicality _ . Don’t lie, Eds, you know what a chick magnet you were to all the other 14 year olds. You should’ve seen them, Patricia, they were _ swarming- _”

“Get off me, asswipe,” Eddie says, but he doesn’t shove Richie’s arm away. “This is your first time meeting Stan’s wife and this is the first impression you want to make?”

“Uh, you just called me an asswipe,” Richie says. “Is that the first impression _ you _want to make on Stan’s wife?”

Eddie glances over at Patricia. “We’ve met before.”

“You what?”

“We’ve talked,” Patricia says. “On the phone. A few times, actually.”

Richie looks between them.

“I came back, too,” Eddie says. “Pat wanted to talk to someone who went through the same thing Stan went through, so.”

“Right,” Richie says. “Cool. Cool.”

They stand there and don’t look at each other. Or, Richie doesn’t and Eddie doesn’t. Stan and Patricia are probably giving each other goo-goo eyes.

“How was the flight,” Stan asks when the silence starts getting awkward.

“Great,” Richie says. “Eddie got shushed by a flight attendant for-”

“That was your fault, Trashmouth.”

“How was that my fault?”

“You got me started! You were talking, too, it wasn’t just-”

Richie loses himself in it. He only realizes that they’re providing a show when he looks over at Stan and Patricia to find Patricia de-pitting an olive, stuffing the hole with feta, then eating it, all the while with her eyes on them and her mouth all pinched like she’s trying not to laugh.

Richie trails off. Eddie follows suit, after he catches on.

“He’s just like you said,” Patricia says to Eddie.

The tips of Eddie’s ears go red. It’s fucking adorable. Richie has no idea what to do with any of this.

“Olive,” Patricia offers.

“Fuck yeah I’ll have an olive,” Richie says, grabbing it and cramming it into his mouth in the most obnoxious way possible to break the tension. It partly works: Eddie wrinkles his nose and Stan makes a noise that sounds a lot like _ Richie _, in that exasperated way he always did. God, Richie’s glad neither of them are dead.

He chews the olive. It’s really nice. He’s never had a feta-stuffed olive before.

“This is so nice,” he says, purely for just - making noise. “You should be a chef.”

Patricia’s mouth twists again, another aborted laugh. “Thanks,” she says, and starts stuffing another olive.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Eddie tells Richie. “That’s so disgusting.”

“I thought you’d be used to it by now, we’ve been living together for months-”

“I will never be used to it,” Eddie says, and it could be an argument but Richie lets it lie, even if Eddie shoots him a suspicious look for doing it.

_ I will never be used to it _, he thinks, and lets himself focus on the feel of Eddie’s shoulder under his arm, the side of his body pressed into his. 

  
  
  
  


He tries avoiding Patricia for the rest of the night, which doesn’t work. She’s in the room with them as they play Jenga and shoot the shit and see who can stack the most beer bottles on top of each other - but it’s fine. She’s _ there _, but this is a group hang. The most words they exchange while all this is happening is “sorry” when she accidentally elbows him as she’s lining up a beer bottle on top of another one. For someone who lives such a clean lifestyle, she’s a shoe-in when it comes to stacking beer bottles. 

He successfully manages to avoid talking to her one on one up until around 8pm. He’s out on the porch, taking a breather - not that he doesn’t love his friends, but he does need a second to be by himself sometimes - when the porch door slides open and Patricia appears beside him, pulling her cardigan tight around her body.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hi,” she replies. 

He waits, looking back up at the sky like he’d been doing before, but she stays quiet for a while. When he glances over, she’s looking out over the ocean. She looks calm, but she also looks like the calm is pulled hastily over something else, something far bigger.

Richie can relate. Except when she’s got ‘calm,’ he’s got ‘manic energy where he’s flinging out jokes so fast that no one can see that he’s anything other than a giant, loud asshole.’

“This is really weird,” Patricia says.

“What?”

“This,” Patricia says. “I - Stan told me everything, and I thought he was crazy. I looked everything up - everything about Derry, and tried to fit it with what he told me. About the clown and what happened to all those kids and - and - it’s _ insane _.”

“Oh, yeah. Big ball of fucking nutzo.”

“And I talk to some of you, and you’re all - you all believe it. You all believe it so hard, and I - god. I was so happy to see my husband again. His scars were - they were _ healed _. Like it had been years, not days. It was impossible. Impossible. I started thinking about - resurrections, and golems, and…”

She trails off. Stares out into the ocean. Richie tries to remember exactly how golems work, but it’s been a while since he zoned out in Stan’s room while Stan read aloud about his religion, sometimes in English and sometimes not.

“But it’s him,” Patricia says. “It is him. Stanley. _ My _Stanley. He died and came back. That really happened. And everything else - all of that happened, too. And you’re all sitting around stacking beer bottles when all this awful, impossible shit has happened to you, and sometimes you bring it up like it’s something casual. You see visions in dreams. Your memories were taken from you, then given back. You’re all - impossible things.”

Richie has absolutely no idea what to say to that, so he keeps quiet. He listens to the sea and remembers seeing it for the first time: the ocean, real and in front of him, not just on TV. He’d been 18, two years out of Derry. It had been fucking cold but he’d put his head under the water anyway, coming up wheezing, coughing, choking in a way that felt familiar, but he couldn’t remember why. He’d thought of inhalers.

“I keep thinking of those movie scenes,” Patricia says, “where a character dies and they see everyone in the afterlife. They run to them.”

“Wait, do you guys _ do _heaven?”

She pins him with a look that obviously means _ not the point _. It’s weirdly Stan-like. Then her gaze goes soft.

“I think,” she says, “when Stan dies - for good, this time - he’ll see all of you.”

Richie swallows. His throat is dry. “Patricia-”

“We love each other so much,” Patricia says. She’s looking out at the ocean again. “Me and my husband. We’re so lucky. But all of you… I’ve never seen anything like it. You’re - you’re closer than family. Bound by something more than blood. By something bigger than all of you.”

Richie tries swallowing again. “Yeah, a killer clown. Or a god turtle, depending on - on what you…”

He stops. There’s nothing else to say, even if he’s grasping for something, anything to break the tension.

Patricia snorts. “See you tomorrow, Richie Tozier.”

“See you,” Richie croaks. He turns his face skywards and wills his eyes to dry as she slips back through the porch door.

Richie blows out a breath. He can’t _ not _imagine it: all of them gathered in a group, waiting for another one of them to arrive: Stan appearing, slow at first, then solid. Spotting the rest of them. His face breaks out in a smile. He runs and they all collide, the seven of them, together again -

The image shifts. It’s Richie, appearing. He turns around and the Losers are there, and Eddie’s in front, his eyes full. It’s been a long time - Eddie never got brought back. Richie’s had to live the rest of his life without him, but now, _ finally _\- 

Richie makes a noise in the back of his throat.

“Quit it,” he tells himself. Then he heads back inside himself. It doesn’t take him long to find Stan, who is walking down the hall - he finds Stan mostly because he wants to find Stan, and a little because he’d rather find Stan than find Eddie and do something embarrassing.

_ He’s here, _ Richie tells himself. _ They both are, they didn’t die, they came back to you. _

“Oof,” Stan says when Richie comes up and hugs him out of nowhere. “You good?”

“I’m awesome,” Richie says, muffled, into his shoulder.

Stan hugs him back. They stay there like that, standing in the hall with their arms around each other, not saying anything. 

Richie closes his eyes. _ Fuck _.

“Your wife’s pretty cool,” he says when he draws back. He’s rasping, but he ignores it. “You lucked out, Stanmiester.”

“I did,” Stan says. He’s smiling softly, content in a way he never was when he was a kid.

Richie sniffs. “I’m glad you’re not dead, man.”

Regret flickers over Stan’s face. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“I know,” Richie says. 

They’ve had this conversation before. Richie thinks they’re going to have it, or pale versions of it, for the rest of their lives: 

_ I’m not mad at you, I get you were scared, but you left us, you fucking DIED - _

_ I’m sorry. _

_ I know. I get why you did it. I’m really not mad. _

_ I was so scared, I’m sorry - _

Around and around in circles, forever. Richie doesn’t mind that, as long as Stan’s around to continue the circle.

  
  
  
  
  


When Richie opens the door to his room, Eddie’s sitting on his bed. His knee is jiggling up and down and he looks like he’s just been staring at his hands for god knows how long.

“Uh,” Richie says. “What’s up?” 

God, he hopes it’s not an Emotional Thing. He’s had enough Emotions for one night. 

Eddie doesn’t reply for a moment. He stands up when Richie approaches.

“After we left Derry,” Eddie says, hesitant. “When we were kids, we just - paused. We didn’t grow past the things we we needed to grow past.”

Oh, god. This is _ definitely _an Emotional Thing.

“We got brave,” Eddie continues, “we fought back - and then we forgot about it.”

“Yep,” Richie says. “Yes, that is what happened.”

Eddie shoots him a look, like_ quit being a dick _, but there’s not much behind it.

“Do you think if we remembered - would things have changed? Would we have changed?”

Richie sighs. He sits down on the bed, then flops onto his back. If he’s going to have another talk like this, he’s gonna be horizontal and avoiding all eye contact.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe? I probably would’ve come out sooner.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says. He sits down on the bed, but doesn’t lie down. He looks down at Richie, which is - not part of the plan, fuck, Richie was supposed to be avoiding all eye contact, but he can’t look away now.

“We made each other brave,” Eddie says. “When we were together.”

“Yep,” Richie says. “Rock wars and killing sewer clowns, oh my.”

Eddie laughs. It’s more of a breath. He’s still jiggling his leg, and Richie eyes it. Eddie says nothing, keeps jiggling, until Richie sighs and sits up and puts a hand on Eddie’s knee to stop him.

“What’s with the leg dance,” he says. “Something’s up, what’s up? You start thinking about how things would’ve gone if we didn’t forget and go down a rabbit hole you couldn’t get out of?”

“...Maybe.”

“We’ve all been there.”

“Yeah?”

“Sure, man.”

Eddie looks away, at the floor. “What’d you think of? How did you think we’d end up - if we were this age, but we grew up remembering?”

Richie is not emotionally mature enough for this shit.

“Uhhhh.” He blows out a breath. “Just - I don’t know, man. I would’ve come out sooner. Everything would’ve happened sooner, I guess. Ben and Bev, all that shit.”

Eddie keeps looking down. Richie follows his gaze and realizes that he’s still holding Eddie’s knee. He slips his hand off hastily, and Eddie blinks. Looks up at him.

“Richie,” he says.

Richie’s neck starts sweating. His _ hands _start sweating. “Yeah?”

Eddie hesitates again. 

There’s a knock on the door.

Richie narrowly avoids flinching. Eddie sighs, snaps, “What,” at the door.

A pause, then Bill’s voice: “Uh, Richie? Do you know where M-mike’s cork opener went?”

Richie opens his mouth to say no when he remembers he’d wrestled it out of Mike’s grip to use in a joke. He pats his pockets and comes back with a novelty cork opener shaped like a wine bottle.

He heads to the door, opens it, holds out the opener to Bill.

“Here,” he says.

Bill stares. His gaze flickers from him to Eddie.

“Th-thanks,” he says, slowly. “Uh. You guys want to come down-”

“I was just heading to bed,” Eddie says, and Richie and Bill have to step out of the way to let Eddie past.

“Goodnight,” Bill says.

“Night,” Eddie calls back, like an afterthought, like he’s buried in much important stuff and is too busy to worry about things like wishing people good nights.

Bill looks at Richie like he’s going to ask, but either Bill’s feeling nice or he can see the blind panic in Richie’s face, like if Richie’s asked what the hell that was, he’s going to start making terrible jokes until Bill leaves.

“G-goodnight,” Bill says.

Richie nearly collapses with relief.

“Night,” he says. “Catch ya later, chickadee.”

Then he slams the door in Bill’s face. He’s heading for the bathroom when Bill knocks again, and he groans. God, he wishes he drank like he used to. If he was wasted all of this would be way easier to handle.

“Are you - are you g-good,” Bill asks.

“I’m fucking peachy,” Richie replies. 

“Alright,” Bill says. “See you. L-love you, Rich.”

Richie swallows over the lump in his throat. 

“Love you,” he says. He waits until his footsteps fade away, then gets ready for bed, eager to get away from this day and its Emotions as fast as he can.

  
  
  
  


When Richie wakes up, it’s with the impression of a turtle burned into his brain. It aches, but only a little, so he stops wincing after a second.

He feels a small wave of apology and he waves it off.

“‘S fine,” Richie says. “You can’t help it, turtle, my guy.”

He flops back into the bed. It’s useless, but whatever. A guy can dream. Except when he can’t, because his brain has been sent into overdrive by a god-turtle who’s trying to be helpful.

Richie gives it a try, but it’s only been a few minutes when he sighs and gets up, sliding his glasses into place. If he’s up, Bev will be awake somewhere.

  
  
  
  


He ends up texting her, because the beach house is _ big _and he doesn’t want to keep wandering around in the dark.

She replies with _ i’m on the porch _ and a smiley face, and less than thirty seconds later he emerges out onto the porch to find her sitting in a deck chair, hugging her knees to her chest. She’s wearing a shirt that obviously belongs to Ben and a dressing gown that obviously belongs to her. She’s wearing slippers that could be either of theirs, since Ben has weirdly tiny feet.

“I wish he’d speak clearly,” Richie says as he sits down in the deck chair next to her. There are a bunch of them lined up.

“I wish he’d speak in actual language,” Bev says.

Richie hums. Good point. Language would make this much easier.

“I still think it’s getting clearer,” she says.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She reaches between their chairs and takes his hand. He squeezes gently. In front of them, the sea crashes softly against the shore.

“Do you ever think about how things would’ve been if we got to grow up together,” Bev asks.

Richie sighs. “You talked to Eddie, huh?”

She nods. “He was… uh, thoughtful, last night.”

_ Thoughtful _, Richie mouths. That’s a word for it. 

“We did grow up together,” Richie says. “This is us, growing up. Leaving all our shit in the past and moving forwards.”

“I know,” Bev says. “But I wish we got to be teenagers - properly, not just until the middle. And I wish we got to graduate high school together, meet up for spring break in college-”

“He asked - Eddie, he asked if things would’ve changed, if we remembered each other. What do you think?”

Bev’s answer is immediate. “We would’ve grown up faster. Being together always made us brave.”

Brave, Richie thinks. He thinks of Eddie saying this, of himself saying this, of himself not saying the thing that he’s kept hidden for most of his life. Loving boys - sure, that’s something he’s said aloud. Loving _ Eddie _-

“I don’t know about that,” Richie says. “I think there are - there are some things that - that we just, we can’t-”

“He loves you back, Richie.”

Richie takes a second. “‘Course he does. I don’t know if he’s _ in _love with me, though. Even if - uh - he said some… stuff, earlier -”

“He is,” Bev says, sounding tired, but not tired of him. “God. I wish we could’ve grown up together. You two could’ve gotten your heads out of your asses in your twenties.”

“Yeah?”

Bev grins. “College sweethearts.”

Richie’s chest twists. “I think that’d be you and Ben.”

He doesn’t let himself think about it for longer than a few seconds: Eddie in his twenties, without the wrinkles on his forehead but frowning so much he was making them in front of everyone’s eyes. Going to parties and ditching parties to hang out with each other. Crashing each other’s dorms and pissing off their roommates. Studying together, staying up til 3am, having whisper-scream fights in the library -

Another life, he decides. A kinder one.

“I might try to sleep,” he says.

Bev raises her eyebrows. “Good luck.”

“Back at you,” he says. He heaves himself out of the beach chair, which is not designed for his spindly limbs, and gives the back of Bev’s hand a kiss before letting go.

  
  
  


Richie heads to Eddie’s room. He doesn’t let himself think further than that. He’s just - walking. Putting one foot in front of the other. Getting to Eddie’s room. Knocking.

Nothing happens. No muffled swearing, no complaining - silence.

Richie knocks again. Whispers, “Eds?”

Nothing. 

“Eds!”

Richie stands there for a few seconds, feeling like an idiot, before slinking back to his room. He’s still opening the door when he sees a shadowy figure sitting on his bed and shrieks.

“Shit - Richie, it’s me!” 

Richie flips on the light. Eddie’s standing now, in those ridiculous fucking pyjamas that make Richie want to cry from their cuteness.

Richie’s heart rate starts to calm. 

“Jesus fuck,” he whispers. “What the hell, Eddie? Just - sitting in my room, in the dark? You want me to die of a heart attack now?”

“No,” Eddie whispers. “Come on, I just-”

Richie waits.

Eddie deflates. “I was looking for you.”

“Obviously,” Richie says. Forget his heart rate decreasing, it’s still going strong. Eddie’s waiting for him in his _ room _. “What’s up, Eddie Spaghetti? Bad dreams?”

Eddie sighs. “No. Well - sort of. What about you, any more turtle?”

“As always. Bev and me just had a chat about it. She still says it’s getting clearer.”

“Is it?”

“Maybe,” Richie says. “Probably.”

He sits down next to Eddie on the bed and waits. Eddie is fidgeting again, knee bumping up and down, twisting his fingers together.

Richie’s thinking about tearing off his own skin by the time Eddie says, “Remember the hammock?”

Richie barks a laugh. “Oh, god.”

“What?”

“Nothing! Jesus. Just - the fights we used to have over that thing.” A memory slides into view, unveiling from its previous fuzziness. “You always ended up climbing in with me.”

Eddie made a noise that could’ve been a laugh, but could also be a choke. 

Richie watches him - the rabbitting knee, the nervous hands. 

His throat clicks. Even if - even if - _ whatever _, Eddie probably already knows.

“I always got in first,” Richie says. “So you’d notice later and climb in.”

Eddie’s knee slows. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

The knee slows more, then stops.

“I,” Eddie says, and pauses. He looks over at Richie. When he speaks, it’s all in a rush: “I didn’t climb in when it was anyone else. I didn’t care about the hammock. I just wanted-”

Eddie doesn’t stop looking at him, and Richie can’t breathe. He’s never wanted to fucking hike it and to stay here, both at once, so badly.

When Eddie touches his face, his hand is shaking. It’s small, but Richie can feel it through Eddie’s fingertips.

“I’m a coward, Rich.”

“You’re not,” Richie croaks.

“I am,” Eddie says. “We all were, in our own ways, but - me the most, I think.”

“Come on,” Richie says. “I - I was in the closet until less than a year ago. Stan _ killed _himself rather than face IT again, I think you can-”

“I died,” Eddie says, and all the air leaves the room. “I died and if I’d stayed dead like I was supposed to, I would never have - I would’ve died still married to Myra and I would’ve died without telling you - I love you. Like, I’m _ in _love with you. I could never face it, I buried it so - so fucking deep, deeper than you did. Because you knew, somewhere, deep down. I didn’t even know. I couldn’t let myself know. But I loved you when we were kids and I still-”

Eddie takes a shaky breath. “I still do,” he finishes. “I love you so much, Rich.”

Richie couldn’t talk if he fucking wanted to. His gaze is blurry with tears, he probably looks pathetic, but Eddie’s hand is still shaking against his face, so he can’t say _ shit _. 

Eddie’s hand smooths out over Richie’s cheek. Fits against the curve, strokes a thumb over Richie’s stubble and Richie is _ gone _: he leans into the touch, only realizes once it’s happened that his mouth is brushing Eddie’s palm. He kisses it, cradles Eddie’s hand to his face with his own hand like he’s in a Victorian drama and Eddie’s leaving on a ship any second now.

But Eddie’s not going anywhere. He’s right here, sitting in front of Richie, his eyes wide and beautiful and not looking away.

Richie kisses him. He thinks of very little as it happens - it feels strange, like 90% of the world has vanished for a while, and everything is clear-cut and simple until it returns. The world pares down into: Eddie’s mouth, solid, warm. Wet, once his mouth opens. All his touches are soft, sometimes shaky, but sure. 

_ Oh god _ , Richie thinks, almost deliriously. Then: _ oh turtle god _.

He snickers. It’s a strange noise, since he’s kind of crying at this point.

“What,” Eddie says. His voice is very thin and breathy.

“Just-” Richie wipes his eyes under his glasses. “Sending a prayer up to the turtle god, who watches over us all. Us religious folk like to check in.”

Eddie laughs. He leans their foreheads together. 

“Dumbass,” he says.

“Yeah,” Richie agrees. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Richie wakes up from a dream about the turtle, which is a surprise. Mostly it’s a surprise that he’s managed to fall asleep, even if it’s probably only been for 45 minutes after making out with Eddie for two hours and falling asleep in a fit of absolute emotional exhaustion.

Bev is right: it is clearer. That thing she’d said about the message being short - that sounds right. Richie thinks that it might be three words, if the message fit into words, which they don’t. Still, if there words words in it, there would be three of them.

Sun’s streaming in. Richie looks over to see Eddie still asleep, sun splayed out over his face and onto the pillow.

_ I missed you so much, _ Richie thinks. _ I missed you all my life. _

He stays like this until Eddie starts to stir.

“Are you staring at me,” Eddie mumbles into the pillow.

“No,” Richie says, on autopilot.

“You are,” Eddie says. He rolls over onto his back and looks at him. “That’s gay.”

“Flaming,” Richie agrees. “Can I kiss you or do you have a thing against morning breath?”

“Who _ doesn’t _?”

“Come oooon.” Richie noses at him. 

“Ugh,” Eddie says, but turns his face to kiss him. The kiss is slow and languid. 

When Eddie pulls back, he wrinkles his nose. “Go brush your teeth.”

Richie kisses him again, then the dent between his forehead, then heads to the bathroom.

“Any more turtle dreams,” Eddie calls as Richie brushes.

Richie spits in the sink. “Yeah. I think we’re actually getting somewhere.”

“About time,” Eddie says.

Richie wipes his mouth with a towel and comes back to the bedroom. Eddie’s lying on his back still, watching Richie emerge from the bathroom.

_ About time, _ Richie thinks. 

“_ Fuck _, you’re cute,” he says.

Eddie rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. “Okay, Richie.”

“Cute,” Richie says, and climbs on top of him. “Cute, _ cute- _”

“_ Richie _ ,” Eddie says, and it’s shot through with laughter that he’s obviously trying not to show but is losing badly at it. When Richie kisses him it’s hard to fit their mouths together at first, since both of them are smiling. Then the kiss deepens and the smile smooths out, and Richie touches him like he’d gotten to do last night, in a way he was terrified of wanting as a 14 year old: he touches Eddie’s face, strokes his hair. God, he’d wanted - he just wanted to touch Eddie’s hands, to touch his fucking _ face _. His forehead, his lovely eyelids, the curve of his cheek, the freckles over the bridge of his nose -

Now, he puts his hands under Eddie’s pyjama shirt and touches his bare stomach, his ribs, his chest. He’d wanted this at 14, too, but he didn’t let himself think of it. He trails his hands over Eddie’s nipples and basks in the way Eddie shivers - _ this _ , he thinks. _ Fuck, everything that has ever happened was worth it for this _.

  
  
  


Around noon, they head out to the porch, where everyone is out in the deck chairs except for Ben, who is playing with his dog on the beach. 

Eddie heads out towards Ben. Richie takes what he assumes was Ben’s deck chair, next to Bev.

“I don’t think it has one meaning,” he says. “It’s barely words. It’s more-”

“Yeah,” Bev says.

“What do you think it is?”

“I think it’s…” Bev concentrates. “I don’t think we’ll ever get a straight translation. I don’t think it’s for humans to understand, not completely. But as close as we’ll get - I think he’s saying _ don’t waste it _.”

_ “Don’t waste it _?”

“Yeah. Or - something about… love.”

_ I love you _, Richie thinks. Down below them, in the sand, Eddie’s grin glints in the sun. He’s shining with sunscreen and he’s wearing a hat because of the dangers of scalp burn, which is a silent killer, apparently.

Richie feels a flood of something almost identical to what he’d felt this morning - an intense, almost religious gratefulness. 

_ Thank you for him, _ Richie sends out, to the turtle or who the fuck ever, he doesn’t know or care. He closes his eyes, tilts his head back so the sun sears through them and sends it through his mind, the tips of his fingers: _ Thank you for him; for them. For bringing us back together. Our souls are bound, we will meet each other again when we die - _

He pictures it: him dying, decades from now. He’d open his eyes to a colourless, vast space. He’d turn, and Eddie would be waiting for him. The others would be there, of course, always - but Eddie would be in front. They’d be old and wrinkled, or maybe they’d be kids again, like they were during that summer, the one that bound them forever. 

Eddie would grin, call him _ Trashmouth _or maybe a word that hasn’t been invented yet or a word that never would be invented, a word past language. Maybe there would be no language in this place, they’d communicate in incomprehensible feelings-notions-impossibilities like the turtle. He’d run at Richie and Richie would run at him and they’d collide, meeting in the middle, wrapping around each other. The others would come, then, and join the clinging, surrounding Richie until he can’t hear or see anything that isn’t them.

The sun starts to make his eyes water, so he opens them. 

Eddie is throwing the stick for the dog. He’s talking to Ben about how dangerous it is to throw stick for dogs instead of balls, because sticks can injure the dog if they go to pick it up the wrong way, they can puncture their mouths. Ben is nodding and saying something about how he has tennis balls somewhere in the house.

On the porch, Bill and Mike are passing a bowl of fruit between them. They’re arguing over who gets the watermelon, because Bill’s apparently had more than his share, and they’re tossing up whether a thumb wrestling match could settle this. Next to them, Stan and his wife are sharing a deck chair. Stan is dozing, and Patricia has her head snug against his chest, a floppy hat covering her face.

Beside Richie, Bev is holding his hand. She’s watching Ben and Eddie down on the beach, so tenderly that Richie wonders if they’re thinking of the same thing.

It isn’t long before Eddie comes back up to the porch.

“Hey,” he says. “Hey, you okay?”

Richie wipes at his eyes. _ Gratefulness, man. It’ll turn you into a mess. _

“Yeah,” he says. He wipes his whole face. “Yeah - I’m just. I’m glad you’re here.”

He pulls Eddie on top of him, and Eddie makes a face but settles against him easy enough. Richie can feel everyone’s eyes on him, but he doesn’t care. He tilts his face up to give Eddie a kiss, and when his friends start making noises that aren’t unlike whoops, Richie smiles against Eddie’s mouth.

“About time,” someone says. Richie’s pretty sure it’s Bill. Whoever the voice comes from, it’s familial and loving, which is the Losers all over.

“I’m so fucking glad you’re here,” Richie repeats when he pulls back.

“Yeah,” Eddie says. He’s all soft: eyes and hair and all of it. “I know. Me, too.”

Richie leans back into the chair. “We gotta build a turtle shrine when we get back. Remind me.”

Eddie snorts. “We are not building a turtle shrine, Richie.”

“How else are we gonna start educating the masses?”

“We are not starting a turtle religion.”

“You could be the first priest of turtleanity.” 

“Yeah, there’s no way-”

“You could wear a lot little outfit. Sexy turtle priest.” He bares his teeth at Eddie. “_ Rrr _.”

Eddie sighs. It’s very long-suffering. Richie fucking _ glows _at the sound.

“How the fuck am I so into you,” Eddie says.

“Fuck knows,” Richie says happily. He settles back into the chair and after a moment Eddie pushes his head under his chin. Richie feels himself smile as he lets it all happen around him: Ben’s dog chasing his owner around with a ball that Bill had offered to get from the house, Stan rousing enough to discuss his birdfeeders with Mike, who has abandoned his watermelon and is pausing in showing Stan a picture of a waterfall he’d seen last month, to hear about the eating habits of the birds who frequent Stan’s backyard. 

With a hand up to frame her eyes from the sun, Bev watches Ben play with the dog in the surf. She hums a tune, long and uneven and gorgeous. 

Richie puts his arm around Eddie. 

He doesn’t think about turtles, god-like or otherwise, for the rest of the day.

**Author's Note:**

> Come hit me up on my [tumblr](http://theappleppielifestyle.tumblr.com/).


End file.
